I'm Big In Germany.

A few months ago, some stranger that I've never met before, followed some obscure Google chain and found my other blog, "Mr.B In Chicago". That's a tangential blog where I posted some emails that I sent out to people, when I first moved to Chicago in 2000. I don't really look at it now that the blog is finished. And so, I didn't know that "Oswald" posted a comment on my blog in March of this year. (You can see his nice comment in the first entry.)

Oswald is a male, fussball-playing, soccer-loving mechanic who digs the Rolling Stones, the Who and The Beatles.

In Germany.

Although his English is pretty good in the comment, his own blog, which he linked to, is entirely in German.

I can't speak or read a lick of German.

So, I have no idea what this kid is saying over there. I suspect that it's like any other blog, Vain self-exploration, curtailing charm and striving for eloquence, but usually falling flat on hammy sentiment. Just like this blog.

Only in German.

Luckily for me, we live in an age of miracles and I could use the Google Babelfish program to translate his German blog into English, for easy reading. The first article was a history of identification papers. The second article was a history of the Gingko tree and its slow march across Europe. The third entry, though, was a gem. Click on it to see the Babelfish translated page.

Or you can enjoy this re-copy of the text of the article, below. Check it out. I've added some follow-up thoughts below the blog post.

Recently in the swimming pool. I lie on a cover, blinzle into the sun. Listen to that Vogelgezwit. The Gesäusel of the sheets over me oak sheets. I think, what for an old beautiful oak! Calibrates? Sky, the oak procession cranks! If those you now get! The corroded your skin! Prepare for you legs itching for months!

Beside me my newspaper-reading wife lies. Notion lot under the oak. Should I warn it? I rather hold the mouth and show for the oak the back. Blades of grass kitzeln me in the nose. Wasps hum. I saw times a disaster film with murderer wasps. But do not look here in such a way, or…? No matter, years ago rammed me times its prick into the toe and my child foot blew myself on to the red Lampion. The world had not seen such a lump yet. All laughed, I howled. Because that was the total failure. Three days acetic acid envelopes! Limping and lamenting. Thus barefoot do not only run here!

Now am I mean head deeper into the piece of grass. I can recommend to everyone, which wants to graulen itself times correctly. Because there you are in the middle in a jungle of the fright. There crawling monsters, live sword tooth beetles, poison-spraying ants. Spiders eat eingespeichelte mummies. Vampire suck the blood of their victims. Here Darwins cruel law prevails. Everyone eats everyone, in order to be gekillt. Here lie in wait also the biting machines, which one calls Zecken. Borreliose transfer the small devil. And Meningitis. The hospitals are full from Zeckenopfern! I examine inconspicuously my and the freely lying parts of the body beside me. Discover two ants and a Pünktchen. The schnippe I back to green hell. Was a Zecke? Oh ever!

The sun kindles a fire on my forehead. Whether we are also well enough eingecremt? One can afford nowadays no more sun fire! The skin forgets nothing. And who wants already folds, marks, skin cancer. I reach into the cream pot and cream after. Now, since my view takes a bush in its sights, it falls me like sheds of the eyes: Riesenbärenklau! One of these horror plants, which cause Quaddeln, if one comes them only into the proximity. With stump and handle exterminated belongs. Infuriates plan I to strike afterwards with the lifeguard alarm!

The woman beside me rapid ELT with the newspaper. It reads an article over summer flu. Beyond the fence drying heaps smell. Hay! At just as a collecting point of heap of hay I got myself times a connection skin inflammation, a magnificent hay allergy! That was a theatre! Optician! Blindly in holidays! While I feel now a certain eye dryness, it occurs to me that I get from the chlorine water eyes always kirschrote. But without chlorine is not because of the bacteria and other disgust things. Public swimming pools like those here are the maddest mushroom factories.

One must, thinks I, in the autumn for being glad, if one survived the summer. There my wife calls: Isn't that a wonderful Plätzchen? The oak, smelling hay, the beautiful meadow! Here one can leave and of nothing bad think the soul so correctly baumeln! Here we should come in the vacation more frequently times!

Wow.

What an entry, right?

Something about his wife and his fear of diseases and bugs. Then some crazy stuff about a cream and some lady on the train and then a whimsical observation to tie the whole neurotic spiel up neatly. It's like an entry from "This German Life".

Obviously, the Babelfish isn't an exact translation. I don't really think that Oswald meant to say,

"No matter, years ago rammed me times its prick into the toe and my child foot blew myself on to the red Lampion."

or

"The sun kindles a fire on my forehead. Whether we are also well enough eingecremt? One can afford nowadays no more sun fire!"

or

"Public swimming pools like those here are the maddest mushroom factories."

Honestly, I don't think I know EXACTLY what he was trying to say in that stuff. I bet, with a little bit of time or interest, I could polish up that text and make it sound like clean, proper English, but then it loses some of it's crazy "sun fire" and "mushroom factory" insanity, which I actually quite like. I have a desire to perform Oswald's post, in the original, translated English, at some sort of public venue. What a challenge! To bring a narrative throughline to this hodge-podge of English! Who has a show that will feature me reading Oswald's German-To-English poetry?!?

I like Oswald. I'll never meet the guy. And it's unlikely that he'll ever see this blog entry. But I like that his blog really does sound like any other blog. I like the universality of the bloggers form. It's self-referential, it's a little self-indulgent and it documents the authors neurosis in a very unfiltered way.

Only In German.

I'm going to close this entry off, using some of Oswald's eloquent words. I'll let him have the final word. Here goes...

"All laughed, I howled."
Oswald, the German mechanic
Sept. 5, 2008